A VR testing job ends the way no one would ever plan for, a sudden electrical fault, a blank moment, then nothing that should logically come after it.
When consciousness returns, it is not hospital lights or familiar voices waiting, but cold air, stone corridors, and a body that is not his own. The identity attached to it is worse still, a disgraced imperial grandson exiled to the edge of an empire that prefers its failures to disappear quietly.
The place of exile is called the Land of the Dead Spirits, though most residents simply think of it as the graveyard of the empire. Snow never quite settles here, fog clings too long, and villagers speak in lowered voices when the dead are mentioned at all. Corpses arrive more often than supplies, and none of them are guaranteed to stay still.
What makes survival more complicated is the system he once chose in a game, Necromancer, still present in his new reality, though it behaves in ways that do not match what he remembers. Undead he raises are not twisted or corrupted in the usual sense, they appear strangely purified, almost stable, as if death itself is being rewritten rather than commanded.
Days pass in a routine of burial work, shovel in hand, dealing with bodies that sometimes refuse to remain buried. He keeps his abilities hidden, partly out of caution, partly because no one would believe a banished prince capable of anything meaningful.
Yet the empire he was cast out from is not as distant as it seems. The Holy Emperor’s authority reaches even here, and bloodline or not, punishment has its own way of finding people.
Something about this world feels structured, almost intentional, like rules written long before he arrived, waiting for someone to notice the gaps in them.
